Rytm & OT is a nice combo, you can go pretty far with it.
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Thatās a sequencer feature Iām looking for 
ā¦ hoping someone can confirm this is possible on black box (allowing for the differences in naming things). It certainly looks like it from the loopop video.
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Iāve noticed a few approaching the Blackbox trying to compare it to other instruments, and it sort of falls short then as far as sequencing and song structure goes, since it has a fairly unusual approach to this.
Look at it like this -
One project contains sixteen samples and sixteen patterns and sixteen batches where one or several patterns can play together.
Any pattern can play any of the sixteen samples, provided thereās polyphony. So a pattern isnāt tied to a specific sample, though many approach the Blackbox as it if was. But itās not.
These patterns can all play together, just one or a combination of whichever you prefer. Each pattern has its own time signature, step length, quantization launch and duty cycle.
You stop and start these patterns completely independent of each other. And when you batch them together into song clips, the patterns keep running over the batches. Essentially creating a structured form of a free running performance, if you donāt want to start and stop patterns live and have some control over what comes when.
It really is a very open and dynamic structure, and Elektron machines are quite stale as far as song writing, track and pattern launching and such things, go. Even high end stuff like the Pyramid, canāt do everything the Blackbox can as far as sequencing goes (though the Pyramid can go a thousand things the Blackbox canāt, in other areas).
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Here, the Prophet 12 recorded into the Bbox, with the CXM 1978 on the master -
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Good points! But now you mentioned the Pyramidā¦what can the BB do what the Pyramid can not? Maybe you can mention a few important differences?
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Iām curious if itās possible to convert/tempo-adjust your loops into desired tempos like you do on the OT, say you have a drumloop in 150bpm and want to adjust it to 130, is that do-able?
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Yep.
But the time stretching on the Blackbox is about average. Itās all right for drums and percussion and such things. Itās a bit less so for harmonic content, though it works.
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I actually quite like its flawsā¦I often use it without hi quality enabled and it has that crunchy, 12bit early autechre vibeā¦ 
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Yeah, on percussion, itās pretty cool. But itās too close to ugly digital distortion on harmonics.
I looove the pitch algoritm, tho. Itās come to the point where I always pitch stuff down two or three keys, after recording. It adds a tape like saturation to the sound. Doesnāt work with time stretch, though. Or it works. But itās wrong.
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Another curiosityā¦
How easy is the BB to slice drumloops and rearrange to the clips?
I get that I wont be able to rearrange and mangle the loops like on the OT, but the thought to get a classic Amen break, screw it up together with a layered Pad thatās 128 bars long make me all exhilarated!
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Itās silly easy. And you can make slices polyphonic, so with tweaked release times and random triggers, you can do a lot more with sliced drum loops than the average pitch up / down, filter open / close, reverb & delay / reverse ā¦ all that jazz.
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Hmmm ā¦ so ā¦ long weekend coming up (UK bank holiday) ā¦ do I stick to my guns and carry on learning the synth I acquired 2 weeks ago ā¦ or do I do what I really want and order a Black Box for this weekends entertainment ā¦
After messing around with shorter samples I was ready to do some longer recordings with the BB. First try, 3-ish minutes of noodling with a Blofeld, feeling pretty good.
Go to play it back, and it cuts out after only a minute. I check that I didnāt accidentally give the pad a set length, but no. So I open it up in the sample editor, and itās showing it as an empty file 715,653,120 samples long:
So Iām assuming the SD card glitched out when recording. I was having some troubles earlier with fast, frequent trigs (like hats) randomly playing late or skipping, so it seems the most likely culprit.
But Iām using my go-to SD card (SanDisk Ultra, Class U1) precisely because itās been so reliable in other devices. So Iām not sure what to try next. What do yāall use?
You should know that sometimes, the Blackbox struggles to load large samples from the card. This is resolved by just reloading the sample. Usually, it only needs a try or two and then itās there.
This doesnāt seem to happen when you preview the sample in the sample load menu, so try to preview the sample before you load it, and see if you get the same result.
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Good tip! But yeah, no joy on the BB. I pulled the card and loaded the wav in a bunch of different sample editors. They at least showed the first minute of audio (and didnāt read it as being ungodly long) but rest of the recording is lost to the digital ether, it seems.
Iāll give it a format and cross my fingers it doesnāt happen again 
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Are you using the original USB cable and adapter? BB can mess up in all kinds of ways if it doesnāt get sufficient power.
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Good point. Yeah, I should have said Iām using the cable and adapter it shipped with. Mostly because Iām positively terrified to use anything else after reading the 1010 forums. I kind of wish theyād just shipped a proprietary brick for power.
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FWIW there is a thread where Steven gave a link to the adapter he uses (he has several Blackboxes (Blackboxen?), as you can imagine). While the exact one he linked to is no longer available on Amazon, the same manufacturer makes one that I have been using with great success.
Not an endorsement, just saying it is possible. 
Really sorry to hear about your troubles. I will be backing my card up today. 
Serving as cautionary tail to others honestly takes away a lot of the sting 
So Iām gathering everyone else is using SanDisk Ultras, also?